NZXT Phantom 820 Full Tower Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,591 words · ~17 min read
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funny story guys I already unboxed this
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but I was wearing a shirt that was a brand that NZXT competes with can you
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imagine how they'd feel about that so we
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are refiling this is the NZXT Phantom
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820 go above and beyond your maximum cooling is the tagline that goes with it
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and on the side this is a 30 lb case guys and I'm unboxing it again I'm like
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weight training today all right on the side we find a whole bunch of
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information about cooling this thing has three 200 mm fans included on the top
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front top and side it has a rear 140 included as well but you can swap it out
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to a 120 if you want to use a a radiator size that's more readily available
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bottom 2x 140 or 2x20 meaning you can do
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a bottom mounted uh dual 120 mm radiator
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so you can have up to a 360 mil r on the top a 120 in the back and a 240 in the
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bottom like wow mind blown uh they give
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you specs in terms of how large your CPU coolers can be your video cooler can be
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and how much room there is for cable management let me tell you 3 and 1 12 centm is a lot of room for cable
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management you shouldn't have any trouble with that at all construction
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there's that 32 lb weight it's fully XL ATX and eatx compatible and you can put
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pretty much whatever you want in it the original Phantom has been replaced
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includes a four Channel digital fan controller with 15 watts per channel
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that means you can do high powerered fans or even multiple fans per channel
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to create cooling zones within your system uh you can also use their Hue
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lighting system and illumination system for exterior and interior and interior
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lighting of your enclosure very cool stuff it you can have an infinite number
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of possible colors using the integrated adjustments and controls uh this is more
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about the cooling which I kind of covered already although the pedestal
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that it sits on actually enhan is the
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cooling potential because it means that you can get more air coming up from the
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bottom it's not just for looks that's a reviewer guide you guys don't need to
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see that this is a nice touch check this out instead of including a cardboard box
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with all the stuff you need they have included a like badass plastic box that
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has everything all compartmentalized and sorted by fan size and you got your
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thumb screws and your radiator mounting screws and your cable ties all that is
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included a nice little resealable box for you so that's pretty cool
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they've also got what appears to be I don't know some kind of users manual
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with like labels and stuff it's okay we'll figure it out as we go and finally
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you've got a little brochure about how NZXT is sort of balling and they have
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sort of Ballin products and you can buy them there you go next thing is to take
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this down and dump it out and I guess
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I'll just do that the size makes it a little awkward
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part of it is that the case is big part of it is that I'm a little
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small now while I would have preferred
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to see a soft foam as you can see our packing foam did get damaged in shipping
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so this corner took a significant blow however there was no damage to the case
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um so NZXT has a lot of experience shipping fully assembled systems in
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their cases so I would hope that whatever they've done to design the
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packaging of this case they have considered that you can see it's up to
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two 2 and 1/2 in thick in some places so
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as long as it doesn't get hit in the same place really hard a couple times in
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a row you should be okay um just
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something that you want to let's see if I can lift this
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out uh just something you want to consider guys is that this Phantom 820
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did get shipped to me by ground from the US so this is pretty much I don't know
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you like you can't say worst case scenario because and the couriers will
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always find another way to uh to to beat something up more in transit but uh this
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is this is not something that was shipped on a pallet and was 100%
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protected during Transit so while I love
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soft packing foam the packing material ouch whoa that got me really good did
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you hear that the packing material did hold up in transit so I can't criticize
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it too much let's go ahead and peel off the plastic this is as far as we got
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last time so this is my first time actually seeing the case itself as you
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can see it's wow that was quite the static shock
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there it is quite large it is here we'll
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start at the back actually CU that'll give you guys a better idea of how
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freaking big this is so that is like
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hold on a second how does this work give me a sec guys and I get it so you can
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move around the 120 mm or 140 mm cooling
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fan that's a neat feature so if you if it's going to interfere with a radiator
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you can move it down if you want it closer to your vrm you can move it up
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very cool stuff four included water cooling brommet and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine
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PCI slots meaning you can install even the longest XL ATX motherboards with no
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difficulty bottom mounted power supply with very very high pedestal check this
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out so you can see these uh these pieces right here that support the power supply
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keep it nice and high off the bottom of the case plus the fact that the entire
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case sits on a little ped meaning you're going to get lots of cooling into your
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power supply I actually recently had a power supply die due to not getting
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enough cooling through that bottom fan cuz it was sitting on carpet and the
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case did not have a pedestal here's the fan filter that can be easily removed
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and clicks into place which is very convenient for those of you who like to
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remove things without you know tools and hassle all right let's have a look at
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the side panel so side panel has that 200 mm cooling fan very neat shape to
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these vents actually see that they've got some 3D sort of Pop to them some
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texture to them so looks uh looks really neat there you go see you guys can see
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that and then the window I usually like to see a bit bigger of a window although
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they are at least showing the parts that uh like the key parts that matter around
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that CPU socket area where you're going to have lots of cool liquid cooling
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tubes and all that kind of good stuff let's go ahead and tilt this bad boy
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down now got another 200 mm cooling fan
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right there remember you can do up to a triple radiator up here and the way
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they've designed the top of the case this time is all about cooling so you
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see this mesh here more mesh down there and this is all ventilated so you'll be
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able to get an ample amount of air flow coming out of the top of the case front
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USB they are not skimping on four USB
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2.0 ports two USB 3.0 ports and then all
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the ports that you could ask for over here so this looks like uh switching
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between the various you know what I'm going have to figure out how this works
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but there's your front panel headphone and microphone there's your power switch
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there's your reset switch here is some of that included lighting effect stuff
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that they got going on let's go ahead and have a look at the front so the
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front reminds me very much of the original Phantom in fact not a whole lot
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has changed about the styling although there's more filtered intakes which you
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can go ahead and pop right back into place there are four 5 and 1/4 in Bays
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ah cool card reader love that SD card reader is included you can change the
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LED modes change the Hues using ah using
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the dial right here and then you can control the io led oh that's really cool
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neaty ke and then there's more lighting effects here and under here here check
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this out so there's more lighting effects right around
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there very very cool okay so going back to the front uh what else we got here so
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very nice finish NZXT has done traditionally a really good job of color
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matching their plastic to their metal so check this out this is about as close as
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you can get see the challenge is that the plastic has a much smoother finish
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than paint so you end up with well you know you end up with no matter what you
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do it'll always look a little bit different but as soon as you get more than I'd say
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about um 2 to 3 fet away you can't tell
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the difference at all which is about as good as it gets other side panel has
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some again some like some texture some 3D to it so this pops out this gives you
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lots of room for cable management and anything else you'd need to get over to
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your drives and all like let's finish with a look at the bottom
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of the case which as I mentioned before is sitting up on this pedestal that has
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lots of holes in it for ample air flow to get in the sides here there you go
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see the sides as well as through the bottom if it if it is if it needs to
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there's all that filtered intake whatnot and there are the rubber feet that the
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entire case sits on and you know what
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let's turn the camera off while I open it up and then we'll be back in a moment
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actually this is something I recognized from the switch so you take these these
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two screws out and then you can actually turn the uh the side panels into a bit
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of a tooless thing here so you just go ahead and move that down pop the side
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panel off and then you can lock it back
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into place just like
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that now the inside of this thing is actually fairly modular so I want to
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start with those features at the very beginning here so you can actually slide
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out this entire Bank of hard drive cages
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so the included hard drive sleds can support either 3 and 1/2 in D completely
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tooll lessly or 2 and 1/2 in ssds on the
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middle of them without without any difficulty so you just kind of slide
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those in from the back you'll have to open up the uh sort of the opposite side
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panel from what you'd normally expect in order to install a drive and once you
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actually get a drive mounted in these they'll be quite a bit more rigid so you
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could just have to kind of arrange them carefully one time and then uh there
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there you go so those are sitting in there once you do that you can actually remove four screws take this piece out
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and that's how you're going to Mount that dual 120 or dual two or dual 120
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dual 120 or dual 140 mm Radiator in the front that's going to draw air up from
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the bottom of the pedestal here this one doesn't come out by the look of oh yes
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it does oh cool okay so you can pull
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this one out too you can mount a 120 or 140 mm fan here using just two holes and
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then you can actually adjust it if you want it to point here then you just tighten the screw you loosen the screw
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if you want it to point up more towards the CPU socket you go ahead and tighten it right there and the fanel sit kind of
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like that pulling air away over the hard drives and then up in this direction
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Lots oh yeah right so you can take out these three 5 and 1/4 in Bays as well
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and you can see inside here that there's a secondary sort of top here uh so you
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can just yeah move things around and take them out as you see fit I mean
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obviously you can't like I don't mean move things around but move them sort of
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physically out of the case if you don't need Drive mounting here and you just
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want that 200 mm fan blowing air right in so that's very cool stuff I mentioned
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this before but you've got Ample Ample support for no matter what kind of power
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supply you put in here and the cable routing options are fantastic so I often
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complain about this when you've got a billion Cable Management holes up here
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and then you've got like one right next to the power supply because it's pretty
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simple math what goes in here must come out there at some
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point NZXT has taken that sort of to the
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next level here and they've got three Cable Management options right next to
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the power supply one slightly above it this is more like for your front panel
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audio or whatever else and then you've got lots of different options up here
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for where it's going to come out that triple 120 mm radiator that I talked
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about before that'll go right here but right now there's a 200 mil uh fan
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that's mounted in the top in its stead so you can easily pull that out here's
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the included case lighting strip so that's going to uh light up your case
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well that's what case lighting does I suppose um and let's have a look at how
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many more 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in drives can be mounted in the other side
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here oh I just stepped on a Molex connector I'm going to need that later
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but not now ow that hurt okay I'm good I'm okay thanks for asking uh Four 3 and
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1/2 in sleds or 2 and 1/2 in sleds
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whatever you prefer are in there then from the back you can see there is tons
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of room for cable management because you've got all this space that is I'm
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trying to hold these out of the way all this space here remember it starts here
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and actually bulges out over here so all this space here plus the space that's in
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here as well so that's a total of 3 and 1/2 CM no big deal huge CPU cutout hole
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so that's really convenient because you won't have to remove the motherboard in
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order to mount a different CPU Cooler that has a back plate and check this out
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they include an individually sleeved 8 Pin cable extension that's fantastic so
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they're assuming you got this super long case and a super tall case and your
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power supply probably won't have a long enough eight pin they go ahead and throw
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that in for you I think that's like a six or eight or $10 value or something
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like that that's what typically these individually sleeved things get charged
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so yeah that's that's awesome included
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cables I mean look at this because of
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all the different stuff that this case has going on there are a lot of included
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wires that you're going to need to Route so this is power for in all likelihood
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your included Ed fan controller and door lighting system these oh
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boy you know what I don't actually necessarily want to speculate as to what
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each of these individual power connectors are powering but you've got a
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SATA power and a Molex power I'm going to assume you need those for something
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you've got uh fan here we go fan
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harnesses that you can go ahead and plug fans into if you want to use them with
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the integrated fan controller you can see they're actually labeled f r ft so
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front rear top and then there's probably
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one more zone I'm trying to look for a for a B1 um is okay sure whatever so
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there's a ton of those you've got the integrated usb3 you've got you must have two
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headers for front USB 2 so here's one of them there must be a header somewhere
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here's the other one for front panel audio which is no USB 2 USB 2 USB 2 oh
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right sorry three USB 2s okay given how
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many motherboards have three USB 2 front panel headers it makes sense I guess um
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HD audio and yeah you guys are going to
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want to work on your cable management a little bit the good news is ncxt
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includes lots of cable management anchors here so all these here here here
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here here here here here here and just
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generally all over the place allow you to anchor down cables just like they've
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done here to make sure that everything lays flat enough that you're going to be
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able to close the casee once you are done with it I think that pretty much
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covers everything I wanted to say about the back so the last thing I want to do
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is throw a power supply in here just to check out this included lighting
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system the integrated fan controller is outstanding so that turns out it turns
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out that that's the Molex plug all you got to do is use the selector up here
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which is the middle one to go okay so to front uh back so here we can actually
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take see the brightness of the LED indicates how much power is being
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delivered to it uh to the fan so go around and check out the back fan I'm
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going to turn it all the way down and it's actually going to turn that
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fan right off very very cool although
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the included fans are very quiet anyway see here I'm turning it back on now so
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that's that's a really neat feature and it turns out the SATA power is for the
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integrated LED lighting so let's go ahead and turn that on so you can see
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things are lit up green I'm going to go ahead and sort of kill the lights in
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here so I can give you guys a better look at how this case looks with the
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integrated lighting effects so actually
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it lights it up really really well you get a nice even glow inside and I'm
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going to go ahead and see what we can do in terms of uh changing things so I
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don't know what this does oh okay oh
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cool oo that's neat so it goes all the
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way up to White there you go and don't forget it's up here as well so there's
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uh there's lighting here did you see the one over here I
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don't know if you ever saw that one so there's one here so that changes colors
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as well and then the ones inside and then you can also ah there's the IED so
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if you want to find a way to plug your tables in in the dark there's just a
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front switch there including your PCI slots which is very very cool as well
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and then there's LED modes so there's uh oh okay there we go
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so we'll cycle through these so there's none inside only which turns off the one
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over here and then there's inside and outside so let's go ahead cycle through
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those colors a little bit very very cool that's the one I'd go with that looks
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awesome I think I'm in the wrong mode ha
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there we go nice like fuchsia interior
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lighting balling thank you for checking out my
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unboxing and first look at the Phantom 820 from NZXT don't forget to subscribe
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